Philip Remus

Philip Remus was born in Lewisham, London on 14th March 1962. From a young age he found himself interested in writing; he always had stories swirling round in his head. However, he didn't get the chance to pursue this interest as he grew older and had a manic and varied career in the world of photography, carrying out work for such big organizations as Vogue and Orient Express. He also dabbled in music video production.

After lifelong Osteoporosis in his back finally took its toll, he was confined to his home, no longer able to organize photoshoots and travel round the world. However, this was the catalyst for Remus to chase his lifelong passion for imaginative and creative writing.​To date, Remus, as he prefers to be called, has written and published 4 books so far, and is working on his 5th Novel, and planning the third book in the Gods of Men series, a dramatized account of the Peloponnesian War from the Spartan perspective. Remus specializes in hard hitting and thoughtfully researched Historical no holds barred literature, set primarily in ancient Greece and Rome, though his most recent novel, “Fatal Charades” is an insightful spy thriller set during the final few years of the Weimar Republic.

Rise of the Wolf (the Athenian War)

Ancient Greek, Peloponnesian War, espionage, political

Rise of the Wolf is the first of a trilogy, and is based during the build-up to the Peloponnesian War, taken primarily from the Spartan perspective through my main protagonist Lysander from his birth, through his harsh and brutal upbringing to young adulthood, with all the political intrigues, and minor conflicts of the period seen through the eyes of shakers and bakers of the time.

Lysander, like every other male of Spartiate blood was born for the warrior creed, and from the day he was born, he, like every other Spartan was a son of Sparta before he was a son of his father Aristokleitos of the Herakleidae – except for one thing – Lysander was of impure blood, come him one half Spartiate and the other half Helot, and as the elders ponder the baby’s fate, as to whether or not to reject the infant for the blemish of his blood and throw him into the gorge where all the rejected of Sparta’s sons are hurled, or to grant him a chance to prove himself in the infamous education system. The infant Lysander’s life hangs by a the thinnest of threads and only his father can redeem him.

Lysander came into the world upon the howling of a wolf, he tells them, a powerful omen by any man’s measure. From here, the story follows young Lysander’s life and the lives of those who would eventually prove to be vital to his advancement and ambitions, and through these men we see the political and military events that are to bring the two great superpowers, Athens and Sparta into a bloody war that was to change the nature of warfare forever.

The Rise of the Wolf shies from no subject, and depicts, through a fictionalised story, very real historical events and hopefully helps to unveil some of the mystery about the enigmatic Spartans.

Legion: The Collegium of Rogues

Ancient Rome, war, espionage, historical thriller

Summer, 30 BCE, Octavian Caesar’s legions have entered Alexandria, Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra Ptolemy are dead by their own hands, bringing to an end, decades of bloody civil wars and a power struggle for the control of the Senate, Rome and her expanding empire. Now only one man remains, the adopted son of Gaeus Julius Caesar, Octavian. Exalted general and shrewd politician, now stands as the most powerful man upon the earth. Pulled by a destiny written before he was born, he knows for Rome to thrive, he must rule through peace – the Peace of Rome, and the way to maintain the Pax Romanum is to make war elsewhere, and he begins with the barbarian lands beyond the Haemus Mountains, inhabited by powerful Celtic tribes. He knows, as every Roman knows, the greatest danger to the security of Italy and Rome lie beyond the insecure boarders of her European provinces. The only way to secure Rome against this centuries old lingering threat, is to conquer them up to the mighty rivers of the Danubius, near two thousand miles long, and the Rhenus, which offer perfect natural boundaries to mark where civilised Rome ends and the savage barbarian begins. The rivers also offer great tactical advantages, not least the navigable inland access to the Euxine Sea and the Oceanus Germanicus practically the entire year round, giving Rome supreme tactical and commercial advantages. Mamertinius is quite extraordinary for his age, but he has had to grow up fast, living most of his life on the road with Caesar’s master spy and assassin. Mamertinius is the son of the infamous and villainous First Centurion of the Fifth Macedonica, Nepos Maximo, the Bastard of the Aventine, but was raised by the equestrian, Draco Cerialis, who has invested all his knowledge and skills, raising him as his own son and teaching him the old ways of the warrior. Draco is murdered by Antonians in Egypt, Mamertinius has managed to escape with his life, killing two of Draco’s assassins and carrying Draco’s report for Caesar, he has managed to sneak through enemy lines to join up with General Calvinus’ legions during the last stages of Caesar’s pincer on Alexandria. With the preparations of the invasion of Moesia under way, Calvinus sends the young Mamertinius to be reunited with his estranged father in Macedonia, where he is to join the Fifth Macedonica as a part of his cover before embarking on an important mission into Moesia. While political machinations are abound in Rome, in Macedonia, Mamertinius departs on his mission into Moesia, where he is to deliver gold to seal Rome’s alliance with King Rholes of the Scythian Getae, and return with a number of Scythian hostages and tribal leaders back to Macedonia. But there is malcontent among some of the Scythians, their ringleader, Prince Budorix who is determined to scupper the alliance and unite the Celtic tribes of Moesia against the Romans in the coming war. Budorix manages to murder several Scythian tribal leaders and some of the Romans (including Mamertinius’ friend Deretinius). Budorix escapes to rally a Celt army to stop the Romans before they reach the city of Ratiaria on the Danube River… During this same period, the Roman conquest begins. Mamertinius and the remaining Roman conquest begins. Mamertinius and the remaining Scythians and Romans in escort manage to get back safely to the Fifth, his mission accomplished, Mamertinius is expected to return to Calvinus in Rome, but Mamertinius refuses to return, insisting he remains a soldier for the duration of the war, to seek vengeance against Prince Budorix, who he has vowed to the gods to kill...

Gods of Men, Where the Spartans Are Made

Historical

Lysander, disadvantaged by his mothax status, is nonetheless determined to succeed in the harsh Spartan Upbringing. To achieve and shine as no boy before him since the age of the heroes.

Born under lucky omens, it’s not long before the boy is noticed by one of the most powerful men in Sparta, who, knowing that Lysander is favored by the gods themselves, quietly guides him towards a destiny that will one day change the world and the very course of human history in what will become one of the bloodiest and bitterest wars in Ancient history, marking a distinct change in the morality of warfare that resounds into our own age.

He is, from the youngest age, tempered in a crucible of unrelenting violence and cruelty. And Inspired by the young warrior Brasidas the Tamer of Helots, (a man with a destiny of his own) and a commander of those most feared of the Spartans, the 300 Hippeis, Lysander learns and masters the bloody mysteries of Aries like none before him.

But there’s another side to the boy Lysander that draws him in into a strange and secret friendship with a helot servant, Epiphanes. As they grow older, the bond between them grows stronger, the dynamics of their friendship gradually changes, drawing them into a world of sexual awakenings and an ever greater need for each other. But with Tellis, nothing happens by accident…

This first book charts the life and times in a fictionalized account of Lysander’s childhood and youth, growing up in the infamous Spartan Agógé. Set against a backdrop of real historical events, as Greece is gradually drawn towards an inevitable war with itself, Gods of Men draws mostly from the Spartan perspective of the Peloponnesian War. Here we glimpse inside one of the most mysterious and closed societies in human history, recounting international political events going on around one of Sparta’s greatest heroes in his most formative years. Unapologetically violent and unsettling at times, the tender moments in this well researched book remind us that these were human beings after all…

Gods of Men, The Delian War

Historical

Lysander of Sparta, now a young warrior, longs for command and the much anticipated war with the Athenian Empire to earn his place through the tests of war and become the warrior he was born to be. He dies not have to wait for long…

Far away from Sparta, a great naval battle is fought between the mighty fleets of Corinth and Megara against Corinth’s ancient former colony, Corcyra, which has made an alliance with Athens, who have dispatched ten warships to join the Corcyraean fleet near some islands called Sybota. Little did anyone know, that from this battle, the bloodiest war in Greek history would spring…

As the greatest army ever massed on the Isthmus of Corinth prepared its invasion of Attica, Brasidas is sent with 300 hoplites to Messene, to put down any signs of helot rebellion and to patrol the coast. Lysander, now an elite of the Spartan hippeis (Dioskouri) is also dispatched to Messene on a separate mission. To take command of a small militia at the city of Methone, in defence against possible Delian skirmishes, little knowing that a fleet of 150 Delian war triremes, a 100 of them Athenian is sailing for the poorly defended city, with an invasion force of near a thousand hoplites marines.

Besieged, Lysander can do little against such a force but fight to the very death, street by street, and with just a handful of Spartans, and a militia of loyal helots, he must hold Methone and hope that help will arrive in time.

Pericles of Athens, has not only taken on the might of Sparta, he has taken on the might of the gods themselves and soon, the shadow of Death passes over Athens with the outbreak of plague, plunging the city into a disturbing and surreal world of madness and death…​Sample

Fatal Charades

Historical, Thriller, Gay, Nazi Germany

In a dramatic departure from his Classical Historic fiction, Philip Remus visits the Weimar Republic during its anguished death throes in this fast paced thriller at the beginning of the Abwehr’s resistance to Hitler, waging a secret and bloody war against the Nazis to prevent them from seizing power, or plunging Germany into civil war.

Karl is a young, handsome and gifted officer cadet, who defies the odds by gaining entry into prestigious officer training war academy, Preussische Kriegsakademie. Despite his troubled background, he thrives amongst the highborn Prussian officer class, and even exceeds them through his determination to succeed as a Reichswehr staff officer.

It’s not long before Karl comes to the attention of Oberst Max (Maximillian) Count von Wallenberg, chief of a covert team of handpicked Abwehr agents, whose mission it is to prevent the Communists and Nazis from gaining power in Germany. As the situation with the Nazis becomes more critical, and after the loss of several agents, Max recruits Karl to his unit. At the same time, Karl, hungry for company, starts a passionate, sexually charged and highly secret love affair with an attractive young man named Oliver...

Meanwhile, In Vienna, it is discovered that scandalous information concerning Adolf Hitler is contained in a dossier. But where is this dossier? Who has it? When it is discovered who possesses it, and that it may be hidden in a boarding house owned by eccentric lesbian opera singer Fräulein George and her eclectic mix of young male tenants, it's decided that Karl is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the house and retrieve the dossier.

However, very worryingly for Karl, the Nazis are only a step behind the Abwehr, and Nazi convert Schreck has dispatched a ruthless, sociopathic killer, Bruno Metz, to find the dossier and kill everyone who knows about it. And so begins a bloody and suspenseful life and death pursuit through Bavaria…

Collegium, Blood of Fire

Historical, Ancient Rome

Egypt has fallen to Octavius's legions. Cleopatra Ptolemy and Antonius are dead by their own hands – the long civil wars are over and now his mind turns to the conquest of the barbarians of Moesia and the capture of the Danube, and completing the two centuries old conquest of Hispania.

But Octavius’ position is far from secure. The renegade legate of the III Aegyptus, still loyal to Antonius, Titus Eximius has escaped, his course set on Octavius' destruction; he turns to the Barbarians of Moesia to raise an Army to march against Octavius. Meanwhile, in Rome, treachery and conspiracy is growing in the Senate, led by Fannius Caepio. ​Amidst these dangers, Calvinus sends his young protégé, Prefect Sabinus Maximo Cerialis, (son of the infamous Bastard of the Aventine, First Centurion of the V Macedonica Nepos Maximo) to hunt Titus Eximius down and kill him and the pursuit begins across the empire, to its ultimate climax in bloody fields of war-torn Moesia…